


Leave All Your Love and Your Longing Behind

by deathmallow



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Daughters, Gen, family duty honor, mothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 02:28:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On watching her daughters take their leave for Kings' Landing, Catelyn thinks about women and the bonds of family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave All Your Love and Your Longing Behind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_magnificently_angry_beaver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_magnificently_angry_beaver/gifts).



> For the_magnificently_angry_beaver. Happy Birthday! :D
> 
> Title from Florence + The Machine's "Dog Days Are Over". First real attempt writing Catelyn and ASOIAF, so all screwups are entirely my fault.

Catelyn watched from the courtyard as Ned climbed into the saddle of his horse, looking at the two girls there. One Tully auburn, with the budding softness promising she was poised on the edge between girlhood and womanhood, looking with bright eyes blues as the summer waters of the Trident at the golden-haired prince who would someday be her husband. The other dark, still small and angular and thin, her winter-grey eyes flashing with discontent that matched the hint of a scowl on her long, Stark-featured face, watching the king’s knights with undisguised interest.

It amazed Cat sometimes that two such different beings could have been born from her blood, nurtured within her own body. Her two daughters—like storm and sunshine. Sometimes when Eddard spoke of Arya with that wistful, slightly troubled smile, she thought he conjured the shade of a girl Catelyn had never met, one with a fierce wildness to her own blood, the Stark girl who would have been her sister. Sometimes when she looked at Sansa, she couldn’t help but return twenty years to her own past, to the drowsy spring days at Riverrun and Lysa’s shy, sweet giggles as she talked about her future dreams.

But Lyanna was dead so many years ago in the Dornish mountains, and Lysa had been lost to her for years and years, far in the south at the Eyrie, and Catelyn knew that sweet, gentle girl had been consumed in an unhappy marriage and the constant loss of children. There were the wives and sisters of Ned’s bannermen, aye, but she knew to them she was the soft southron bride Eddard Stark had brought to the North—by her position as their liege lady and by her birth in the Riverland, they would never embrace her as one of their own. She was left sisterless. 

Maybe it was better that Arya and Sansa cared so little for each other’s company. The day would have come when the days of childhood would be lost, and the bonds of girlhood were torn asunder as the woman went forth as a bride. As a daughter of a great house, that would be even truer, for both her daughters would wed men of their own standing. Sansa, already one day to be Westeros’ queen, and Ned had spoken idly already sometimes of the need for a match for Arya—perhaps one of the sons of Highgarden. 

No, they would have been parted one day, and other bonds taking the place of a sister—a husband, and in time, children. She thanked the Seven for the kindness and goodness of Eddard, but sometimes she felt the ache of Lysa keen as a knife blade. 

She felt the drag of that same blade now, watching Sansa and Arya take their leave, as she raised her hand in farewell and counseled herself to stay stoic and strong. She wouldn’t shame her children or Eddard, even as some part of her wanted to weep. She knew Sansa would finish her childhood at court, groomed for her new role, and she would never return to Winterfell except as the Joffrey’s queen. Catelyn might not be fortunate enough to see Arya’s return before she grew to womanhood and went to her husband’s keeping. A betrothed’s claim on Sansa and a father’s on Arya had already taken their place over her own mother-bond, severing it. She saw Sansa looked to her future with excitement, and Arya with reluctance. 

Someday her daughters too would know the pain of watching a daughter ride away, finally knowing that the hearts of women, and the ties between them, meant little in this world. They would have to find the strength to bear it, to try to put those old ties aside and leave them behind as the things of childhood, just as she had the day she bid Lysa farewell at Riverrun. A strength not measured by the sword, but she thought the courage behind it was no less for that.


End file.
